Rayymonnn Back in da Bayouu

Amanda, Brittany and I dressed as the 3 blind mice for a party at UCSD. We were definitely the best dressed there. Anyways, sorry to everyone! I've had a mini-hiatus. Between the fact that my sister was really against me making anything and my bestest friend Brittany coming home, visiting Amanda in San Diego and coming back and making chocolate cupcakes for my sisters' friend Tracey's graduation party, it was a little crazy around here. I made a few batches of cookies since my last post but nothing new. Upon return from my mini get away I went straight to work. I made chocolate cupcakes with caramel filling. I cheated. I've made these before but they were so good, I wanted to make them again. I got back today from San Diego around 4:30-5:00-ish and started, but I was rushing to get them done so that Tara could take them to the BBQ. So instead of being patient and waiting for the sugar water to caramelize for the caramel, I added the cream to early, and seeing that it was too light in color, i returned the pot to the stove, and cooked it until it looked like the right color. It smelled really good, so i figured it was fine, but after I filled the holes I had just hollowed out of the cupcakes, I saw that the caramel had a strange texture. Eeeek. It was pretty much just like straight sugar, but my sister returned home with rave reviews, so I'm guessing they didn't mind. So, I've learned my lesson! You can't rush the baking process, 'cause it'll bite you in the butt. The frosting and cake for the cupcakes are reeeeeaaallly good recipes, I recommend looking into buying Martha Stewart's book on cupcakes. It's def worth it.
Tomorrow, I have a big day. Jack Johnson is playing at Santa Monica Pier for free, so Brittany and I are heading to the beach early in the day to avoid being stuck in the back of the audience. I'm thinking about making a picnic type food for tomorrow! We'll have to see! Until tomorrow, Rayymonnn say good night from the bayouuuu.

Strawberry Day

After some delicious and infamous Papa Daly pancakes with fresh fruit, sausage and bacon we were ready to head out to Oxnard to the Strawberry Festival. Once my brother, my sister, Collin, Christine and Mary Jo are all in the car, we start towards the freeway and hit some major traffic that we weren't really expecting, but we had faith it would soon fade out. We get onto the 101, which the iPhone has directed us to take, and realize that after taking the 405 for a considerably long time, we have to spend more than 28 MiLES on the 101. So we continue to sit in the bumper to bumper traffic and wait for our exit (christine and I were rooting for an In-N-Out pit stop, but no one else agreed). Finally we reach our exit, and Collin looks at the directions on his iPhone and sees we have 23 miles to go on roads of Oxnard before we get to the Strawberry Festival. After taking a bathroom break at McDonald's (where my brother opted to buy a cheeseburger and extra large sweet tea... gross) we start to get close and see signs for the festival. We have a sign on the left of the road telling us to turn left for the Festival, and a sign on the right pointing us towards the shuttle. We decide to park closer, and not take the shuttle. Long story short, we make 3 wrong turns and have to make some semi-illegal U-turns to get back, but we made it. We finally enter and, all starving for food, we head to the food section of the festival. We split up, and meet back up for some lunch.
It was pretty good, classic fair food. After walking around, listening to a Journey cover band and middle-aged women and men dance in an unsightly manner, meeting a hippie most likely native to Santa Cruz and trying out some strange hammocks, we headed home. I slept the whole ride home, and was extremely tired from all our eating and strugglefest traveling, I almost didn't make anything (Tara was very rude by encouraging me NOT to make anything), but I finally got up off the couch and picked up some rhubarb, for a strawberry rhubarb crumble. I think everyone appreciated my efforts because it was half gone by within 15 minutes of coming out of the oven.

I used a recipe from 101 Cookbooks, but changed a few things. Instead of using spelt flour I used regular and I used regular sugar. I didn't make the topping into patties because it was a little too dry for that, but I also had left over topping. Next time I think I will half the topping and add a little bit more butter. But other than that everyone loved it.

While I was at the store I figured I'd pick some ingredients up for my recipe for tomorrow. But my bestest-estest Amanda friend came home for the night and I decided that I should just make the cookies that night. I got the recipe for white chocolate macadamia nut cookies from the blog Joy The Baker. It was pretty good; I am not a big fan of white chocolate, but they were pretty delicious. I cooked them the first time for as long as the recipe called for, but for anyone who knows me knows that it is very unusual for me to bake cookies for the time called for in the recipe. I only eat my cookies when they are appropriately gooey. So they were perfect for me after 8 minutes. mmmm. And the house smelled really good too.

Well excuse me for now because I'm spending l=time being fat with Amanda and eating menchies and chocolate peanut butter milkshakes. I'm in the mood to make something else... (against my sisters wishes).




Me and Amanda circa 1996. Proof of my chubbiness.